Over at Purple Liquid: A Wine And Food Diary, our 2005 Lytton West Syrah recently came in first place in a blind tasting of international Syrahs. This is a great blog in general, and this particular post is a wondrous read if you’re a Syrah fan, so I highly recommend checking it out. You can find the post here. This wine was also the subject of a recent post on our blog about co-fermenting Syrah and Viognier, which you can find here if you’re interested, and didn’t catch the story the first time around.

Officially, this wine is no longer available, but we have a few bottles squirreled away in the Monte Bello cellars, so if you’re up for a visit to Monte Bello, mention this post, and I’ll see what I can procure!

2 replies

Hmmmmm…interesting results. I’d like to see a little more in the way of detailed notes.
The Cristom is one of my favorite USofA Syrahs. Very distinct cold-climate character w/ lots of cracked black pepper. Probably more than any other US Syrah.
A bit surprised that the Ridge came in first. I generally find them, when young, pretty tight. It probably has more structure than any of these Syrahs and they don’t really start to show a whole lot until they get some age on them. The ’02 Lytton Syrahs are still pretty tight & primary right now and not yet showing a lot of development.
Tom

Thanks for the response Tom, and absolutely and TOTALLY agreed on the Cristom; I first discoverd it while working as a wine buyer in Chicago; a rep brought it in, and I have to say, from a “price break to quality ratio” angle, it’s alot of wine for the money …

As to the Ridge syrahs, I’ve been watching the sibling ’02s for quite some time now, and it’s been interesting to see how they’ve jockeyed back and forth with one another; currently, I’d say the Syrah II has closed up somewhat, and the Syrah (or Syrah I, colloquially) has actually taken some notable steps forward in development, particularly as regards the softening of tannins …

Regards the ’05, I have to say, while I agree that it’s awful young still, it’s an “excitement wine”, and that excitement is starting to emerge; in the tasting room in particular, you can really see people’s faces light up when they come to this wine in the flight; it just seems to have that certain something …